Home networking

This is a discussion on Home networking within the Tech Board forums, part of the Community Boards category; Hi everybody,
I have two computers at my home in two seperate floors. I want to share data and use ...

Home networking

Hi everybody,

I have two computers at my home in two seperate floors. I want to share data and use my laser printer from both computers. Only one computer will be used for internet connection (Dial-up). Can anyone please tell me what accessories I need to build the network?

In a nutshell a crossover cable has different ends compared to
a straight-thru cable which has identical ends. Your local PC store should be able to supply you w/ either, just make sure you ask for a crossover if you intend to simply connect 2 NIC cards together.

You'll need a hub/switch when there are more than 2 PCs need connecting.

Use a class C private IP address range starting from 192.168.0.1 onward. In your case the printer doesn't need an IP, but the PC (the print server) which connects to it, does.

Umm...I am not sure about the printer. Say, if I want to print from the computer which is not directly connected with the printer, then does the other computer (on which the printer is attached) needs to be powered on?

>>How would the built in print server in the hub be able to handle printer drivers?

it wouldn't, the computer you're printing from has the drivers on it, just as if the printer wasn't hooked into the network, just to the comp. The Hub would just have to have the ability to send data to the printer as if it were sending data to any other node on the network. It just provides a go-between for the different media (parallel port vs cat 5)

to share an internet connection, there must be a "proxy" server. Now this proxy server can live on a machine that is plugged into the internet somehow or it can be in a router. I think all routers supply dhcp service and internet gateway. My setup is simple too though. I use a simple hub to connect the two machines but one has "internet connection sharing" set up which is essentially a dhcp service with web proxy.